Recently, there have been proposed a variety of techniques of providing services with which players at remote locations can play board games, such as shogi (Japanese chess) and igo (Game of go), by using internet server or leased server of mobile phone, such as i-mode, and leased line.
As typical representative of the system providing the board game service, there are prior arts disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 56-3078 and 54-110033, and Publication of EP11420.
Although various net-battle games have been proposed as stated above, the games are not really widespread. The reason for this is as follows.
There is not always a competitor's entry in a server. It is therefore not uncommon that no competitor is present even if a player accesses to the server for game purposes. This problem will be immediately solved by the spread of net-battle games, which however generally involves such a greatest problem of structuring environment in which battle games are executed between game players of equally matched in their skill level.
That is, when playing a battle game, it is more amusing for game players to battle with competitors of equal skill level. It is however inconvenient for game players demanding a battle game with a strong competitor that a game player of similar skill level is evenly and forcedly assigned.
This inconvenience is not limited to low-skill game players, because even high-skill game players may sometimes desire to accept a battle game with a low-skill game player.